Possible Oil Spill in Alaska Spotted With Google Maps?

March 22, 2013

I don’t think there are many other people who spend their spare time perusing remote sensing images, Google Maps, and the like. I’m one of them, and I may have found a compatriot: climate blogger Michael Cote — who says he has found evidence of an unreported oil spill in the Arctic using Google Maps.

He posted a series of Google Maps images showing what appears to be a very small oil spill at a ConocoPhillips facility near the Colville River in Alaska. I decided to have a look on Google Earth — to get a more interesting oblique perspective on the scene. The image at top is what I came up with. Click on it for a larger view, and then look at what appears to be a dock projecting into the waterway. There’s a dark stain in the water, as well as a structure that sure looks like a containment boom to me.

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